


Raw

by Bus_Kids_Burgade (Inthemorninglight)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Dealing With Trauma, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post 3x10, a little bit of bus kids friendship snuck in there, sharing a hospital bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 20:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8174710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthemorninglight/pseuds/Bus_Kids_Burgade
Summary: The night after Jemma is tortured. Daisy isn't sure if she can help her, but she can hold her.





	

Daisy has loved Jemma as many things. A ray of sunshine. A blazing flame. A roiling ocean. A sinkhole caving in on itself. Tonight, though. Tonight she is glass run through with a thousand fractures. Tonight she is near to shattering into glittering fragments. 

When Daisy finds her in the med bay, the expression in her wide eyes makes her fear even lifting the sheets to slide in beside her might make her break. Fitz is there, holding her hand and murmuring soft apologies she’s probably not hearing. He turns this stream on Daisy when he sees her, a mirral of guilt and heartbreak. 

She hugs him hard, breathing the scent of dust and sweat and ash, so close to how Jemma had smelt for weeks, still did sometimes. She knows he won’t listen if she says it aloud, so she tries to press absolution into him. Say  _ it is not your fault _ in the tightness of her grip. 

“You should get some rest,” she orders gently. 

He nods, eyes fixed somewhere over her shoulder, bends down to press a kiss to Jemma’s temple and murmur one last “I’m sorry”. Her hand comes up to brush his cheek before he straightens up again, as though she can clear the veil of sorrow from him herself, and he looks like he might cry at the gesture.

When he’s gone, Daisy sits on the floor at the edge of the bed. Gently, she brushes Jemma’s hair back. 

“How ya doin’, lovely girl?” she murmurs. 

“I’m okay,” Jemma whispers. Her voice is hoarse. 

“Lincoln get you the good drugs?” 

But her eyes have drifted far away again. 

Daisy stands, comes around the bed and eases down behind her on the narrow mattress. 

“Can I - ?” she asks, arm hovering uncertainly over Jemma’s waist, afraid of hurting her. 

Jemma guides her arm to rest around the worst of the wounds covering her torso, and Daisy holds on as tight as she dares, laying her cheek on the top of Jemma’s head, trying to fold her into her own warmth. As if she can be a human shield between Jemma and this fucking universe that keeps kicking her down every time she starts to climb back to her knees. 

Daisy remembers Bobbi after Ward. It was different, true, and that time was so tangled with Jemma’s disappearance and her own mother’s betrayal and violent death, but the expression of something beyond even rage or dejection she’d once caught in the lines of Bobbi’s face, the lack of recognition as Bobbi stared at her own reflection, still haunted Daisy now. 

To beat back the threatening tears and stop her throat from closing up, Daisy asks softly (desperately), “What can I do? What will help?”  

A weak smile trembles on Jemma’s lips, and, painfully, she rolls to better see Daisy’s face. 

“I’m alright, now,” she promises. “Really.”

“Jemma - “ Daisy starts, exasperated, pained, and honestly a bit frightened, but she is cut off by a soft, “Daisy,” half warning, half reassurance. 

She’s seen Jemma do this before, absorb the shockwaves, dig her heels in, deal with her own trauma by refusing to acknowledge it. Before tonight, Daisy saw it as a less-than-ideal coping mechanism, and even sometimes mistook it as a kind of strength, but in the clinical florescent light of the medbay she can see how unsteady her foundation has become and is terrified if she tries to take another hit like this, it will be her last. 

But Jemma looks weary and Daisy has no words right now that would be helpful. 

For a long while they just lie in the dimmed med bay, feeling the rise and fall of each other’s breath. Daisy thinks Jemma might have succumbed to the cocktail of painkillers and anti-anxiety meds Lincoln mixed for her and drifted off, but when she shifts to peak at her face, she finds her eyes still open. 

Their hands lie next to each other on the blankets, fingers curled loosely together. Following her gaze, Daisy sees what Jemma is staring at at once: the angry red marks circling her wrist where her bonds rubbed her skin raw. There is a strange expression on her face as she stares. 

Daisy slides her hand more firmly into Jemma’s, squeezing a little more tightly as words finally come to her.

“It’s okay if you’re not okay,” she murmurs, carding fingers through Jemma’s hair. “Fitz isn’t okay. Coulson’s a long way from okay. I’ve been not okay for most of my life until lately. You don’t have to be okay.”

A noise comes from Jemma’s throat, strangled and pained, and at first Daisy panics that her lung is collapsing or something, but then a sob breaks free. Jemma’s face crumples and her chest heaves, one hand curls into a fist in her hair. She screams another sob and Daisy pulls her tight to her chest, holds onto her as she shakes and claws at her own hair and screams again with the raw  _ feeling _ trapped inside her. 

It is wilder and fiercer and sadder than anything Daisy has ever witnessed in Jemma before and the sound of it makes her sob, too. There are no words, no direction to point the anguish. Its messy and inelegant and unbridled. But for once they are together in the waves, and Daisy is glad to be allowed to be there. 


End file.
